Goodell: NFL to offer free medical follow-up work

Thom Mayer, medical adviser to the National Football League Players Association, responds to a question during a news conference on head injuries among NFL Players, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009, in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
— AP

Thom Mayer, medical adviser to the National Football League Players Association, responds to a question during a news conference on head injuries among NFL Players, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009, in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
/ AP

WASHINGTON 
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell plans to tell Congress that the league will offer free follow-up medical work to 56 players who reported dementia, Alzheimer's disease or other memory-related problems in a recent survey that helped spark a hearing Wednesday on head injuries.

Goodell said in written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee that the league also will reach out to the players to see whether they are receiving money from the 88 Plan, which provides up to $88,000 a year to former players suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, regardless of the cause. A copy of Goodell's testimony was obtained late Tuesday by The Associated Press.

The recent study, conducted for the NFL by researchers at the University of Michigan, suggested that retired pro football players may have a higher rate than normal of Alzheimer's disease or other memory afflictions. Lead author David Weir, who is among the witnesses for Wednesday's hearing, has said the results show the topic is worth further study but they do not prove a link between playing football and later mental troubles – a point stressed by the NFL when the study was released.

"We have directed Dr. Weir to contact in a confidential manner those 56 former players and their families who reported memory problems to see if they are receiving 88 Plan funding and offer them the opportunity to have follow up medical work done at our expense," Goodell said. "That process has already begun."

Goodell said that while this was a "a telephone survey and not a true medical diagnosis, we share the views of the Michigan researchers that the number of retired players reporting memory-related problems is a concern that needed further research."

Goodell said the health and welfare of all members of the "NFL family, particularly our retired players," is personally important to him. "Since becoming commissioner, I can think of no single issue to which I have devoted as much time and attention."

Regarding head injuries specifically, he said medical considerations must always trump competitive ones, and that the league has established a toll-free hot line for players if they believe they're being pressured to return to the field before fully recovering from a concussion or other head injury.

"All return-to-play decisions are made by doctors and doctors only," the commissioner said. "The decision to return to the game is not made by coaches. Not by players. Not by teammates."

He also pointed to changes in rules aimed at reducing contact to the head and neck, the development of improved helmets, research and education.

The new head of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith, said in his prepared remarks, also obtained by the AP, that the union "has not done its best in this area. We will do better."

But he also criticized the NFL for diminishing studies that showed a connection between football injuries and post-career mental illness. Smith promised that the union's new concussion and traumatic brain injury committee will act as a "superconductor to commission, evaluate, follow and disseminate ongoing research."